Ink and Steel (45 page)

“With a black cloth coat / and a starch'd white ruff / all strewn o'er the greensward—” Will sang to the tune of a common tavern song, and Kit laughed. “So, sweet Christofer, how shall we entertain ourselves until the dinner hour?”

“Hast eaten?”

“A pastry and a bit of small beer. It will do.”

“I could introduce thee to the gardens.”

“If they outshine the conservatory—” Will's stagy gesture took in the glittering dome overhead, the marble planters full—without regard to season—of nodding blossoms, the scent of the wisteria as heavy and sweet as treacle. “Shall I be called upon to sing for my supper again tonight?”

I should count on it, my friend.
“The Fae,” Kit said softly, as they came up on the rest of the group, “will pay handsomely to be made to feel. They are cold and strange, and I sometimes think . . .”

Will's curious gaze stroked his face.

Kit felt it as a palpable touch, and sighed. He stopped, and turned aside to toy with the cool, silken petals of a chimerical chrysanthemum.
Put it aside, Marley—
“I sometimes think they envy us our passions, and half the reason they steal us mortals away is to keep us hothoused like these blossoms. Nothing ever
dies
in Faerie. It just grows chill and dark.”

“I could wish a little chillness in trade for a little life.”

Kit glanced up at the bitterness in Will's tone, and almost reached to take Will's arm. The stiffness of the other man's posture, his averted eyes, gnawed at Kit with sorrowful teeth, and he let his hand sink back to his side. “Will, I'm sorry—”

“No,” Will said. “You've nothing to be sorry for. There's nothing you can make better, Kit.”

I could have been there,
Kit thought.
You said it yourself.
But he waited, dumb, as Will wandered away to plunge his hands into the fountain again. A tug on Kit's sleeve startled him; he jumped and turned to his blind side. “Geoffrey!”

“Your pardon, Sir Poet. You seemed pensive.”

“I am pensive, Geoff. Has the music lost its charm for you already?” He tilted his head suggestively at Amaranth, Puck, and Cairbre, who were still in full swing.

The stag shrugged, which Kit found anatomically interesting, and looked down his long muzzle at the poet. “This Shakespeare is a friend of yours?”

“Aye,” Kit said, “a good one—”

Geoffrey raised a placating hoof at the warning tone in Kit's voice. “I meant nothing by it. One tries to stay apprised of the poetical rivalries in court, of course, and it's been long since we had bards to choose between.”

Kit laughed. “Friendship has never stopped us being rivals. The two are not exclusive. Is politics and poetry the main course tonight, then?”

Geoffrey's cloven forehoof moved like a scissors. He lifted the dark violet, golden-eyed blossom he'd snipped from the planter to his nostrils and sniffed. “Do you remember when we spoke of war, and bondage?”

“Love-in-idleness. I couldn't forget.”

“Then you know 'tis always politics.”

“Politics and poetry. Politics and love. Politics and fairy tales. This is the introduction to a seducement, Geoffrey.”

“Am I so transparent?”

Kit let his voice go low, but kept the banter in his tone for the sake of eavesdroppers. “It's been a long time coming,” he said. “What does it entail? The overthrow of the Queen?”

“Nothing so dire,” the stag answered, just as soft. “Merely a little magic. Which you well began in song already, I wot.”

“Why now? Why not last year, or the year before?”

The stag arched his head, observing the musicians and Will both through the advantage of his wide-spaced eyes. “You're reclaiming yourself at last. You show you are a man of loyalty, once that loyalty is won—”

“I wouldn't be so hasty as to think so. I've never been known for choosing sides based on anything other than expedience.”

"Haven't you? You've been careful
not
to choose, here, Sir Christofer. It has not gone unnoticed that you share your gifts between factions, and permit none of them, quite, to claim you.”

Kit caught himself chewing a thumbnail, made himself stop and tuck his hands inside crossed arms. “What can you offer me that Morgan can't, or, failing that, the Mebd?”

“Freedom,” Geoffrey answered, the sunlight shining on the silver-gray patches where his antlers would grow come the fall. His wet nose quivered softly. “If you like—”

Kit felt Puck's curious eyes on him when he reached out and eased the flower from Geoffrey's hoof. He crushed it in his hand—satiny moisture and a violet stain that vanished when he brushed the ruined remains on the raven's-wing velvet of his doublet. “We'll talk again,” he said, and nodded once before he walked away.

Leaning against a marble satyr, Kit folded his arms and watched Cairbre and the towering Amaranth show Will the esoteric fingerings of a silver Faerie flute. He covered a momentary pang of jealousy with an idle smile.
Give him his glory: a poet in Faerie.

Kit laughed silently.
If Orfeo stole his Lover back from the Faerie king, what does that make of me, having done the reverse?
A moment before the fallacy sank in and his mouth twisted in bitter whimsy rather than humor.
That is to say, if I had any claim on him at all. Mayhap Annie can come steal him back from me, and keep the Legend intact.

He sighed and looked down at his hands.
Most men are married,
he reminded himself.
It is the custom of the age.

Ah, the unanswerable questions.

He straightened and left Will there, slipping through the glass door to the garden. Gravel settled under his boots; the scent of roses overwhelmed the sticky, lingering perfume of the crushed blossom upon Kit's skin. Kit turned his face to the sky, reveling in the warming sunlight.

He recognized the step on the walk behind him and didn't turn to face who came. A warm breeze lifted Kit's hair; a warm hand followed it, stroking the nape of his neck. “Wanton.” A whisper against his ear.

“Murchaud.”

“Sweet Christofer. Your friend has charmed the court already.”

Kit bit his tongue on his first reply and forced his manner to calm. “He's for the ladies, lover.”

“Poor Kit, that he should disappoint thee so. And more fool he.” Murchaud knotted a hand in Kit's fine, full hair and turned his head to kiss him on the mouth. Kit fairly burned with unexpected shame, knowing the embrace plainly visible from within the conservatory. Knowing Will would think Kit had abandoned him among strangers to go out to his lover.

Murchaud spoke against his ear. “You're thinking.”

“Aye.” Kit cast about for the plausible lie, hesitated. Drew back enough to look Murchaud in the face when he spoke. “The Mebd—”

“Aye.”

“What do you think I owe her, Murchaud?” He turned as he spoke and strode slowly along the path, leading Murchaud among the roses and their lesser brethren.

“Aside from your life?”

“She's got payment in service for that,” Kit answered. “And surely I owe your mother as much.”

“Aye.” Murchaud cocked his head to follow the flitting progress of an exaltation of larks. His right hand rested possessively on Kit's elbow.

“Everyone pushes me in one direction or another, Murchaud. As if the whole world held its breath, waiting to see which way I'll bend. And yet I feel I am not vouchsafed information enough to do so intelligently. ” Kit kicked at the gravel. They came beside a path of cypresses. Kit did not remember having gone this way before.

“And when you chose for England and her Queen, what details were you vouchsafed then?”

Kit stifled a laugh at himself. “That was simply naive patriotism, I'm afraid. And there was only one side that wanted me—”—
untrue,
he realized as he said it.
Or I wouldn't have been able to enter Rheims at all.

“Well, then, to be wanted so desperately now tells thee something.” Murchaud drifted away, plucking dusky blue berries from the evergreens hedging the walk and flicking them away with his thumbnail.

Kit caught their resinous scent and thought it erotic. “And what am I taught, my love?”

“Thou art important to someone. Come, I wish to show something to thee.”

Kit considered that as he followed the suddenly animated Prince across a wide green lawn toward a copse of thorn trees hung with berries red as blood. Curiosity galled him, but he wouldn't give Murchaud the satisfaction of seeing it manifest.
You'LL know soon enough.
“The Mebd said once that when Queen Elizabeth passes there will be a rade. A procession.” Murchaud's strides were long. Kit hastened to keep up, soft greensward dimpling under his boots.

“Aye, we'll go to honor your Gloriana.”

“And your wife”—the faintest emphasis—“said also that there would be a war. A war of song.”

“A war of spells. Not that they are much different, in Faerie or on Earth.” Murchaud led Kit under the bowering thorn trees, lifting the branches aside. Red blood welled from the Prince's thumb; he licked it and laughed. Beyond the trees rose a simple pavilion of classical design, a miniature Parthenon of milk-white stone.

“How can she know what will happen when Elizabeth is dead?”
How can any of us know?
To contemplate her death alone was a marvel: Iron Bess had reigned—and ruled—longer than Kit had been alive.

“We can't,” Murchaud answered, turning impatiently to Kit, who must have mounted the steps more slowly than the Elf-knight liked. “I can only guess. And it may not be hard on the heels of her death. I rather expect there will be a few years' subtlety and manipulation, first. Edging the pieces about the board.”

“The midgame starts when Elizabeth dies. Why?”

“Because faith in Elizabeth herself is half the faith that holds England and the Protestants together,” Murchaud said. “And that faith alone is enough to send enemy ships stormlost at sea, and bring forth men like Burghley and Walsingham and Shakespeare and Marley to serve.”

“What's that?” Kit gestured to the long marble box, chest-high and seemingly hollow within, that dominated the center of the pavilion. The only other furniture was a pair of marble benches along the walls.

“England,” Murchaud answered. “Come forward, Sir Christofer, and meet my family.”

Curious, Kit walked up beside him, through the softly breezy shadows, until he stood beside Murchaud over the tall plinth, as long as a coffin. An apt comparison, because—
A plinth,
he realized.
Or a bier.

Its high marble sides enclosed the form of a man on a platform some twelve inches below: what Kit would have taken for a waxwork had not the impossible profusion of copper-blond hair stirred in the passage of the sleeper's even breaths. Someone had combed those locks to softness, shining like hanks of silk in the filtered light, and Kit judged it would reach beyond the sleeper's knees if he stood, on a man as tall and as broad as Murchaud. A golden circlet crossed his splendid brow, and a scattering of freckles dusted the skin over the aristocratic bones of his face: last stars fading at dawn. By contrast with his hair, his beard was neatly barbered and as red as Kit's, but streaked with steel under the corners of the mouth. Powerful elegant fingers enfolding the hilt of the bronze Roman sword laid down the centerline of his chest gave Kit the first soft inkling of who this was. “How long has he lain here?”

“A thousand years.” Breathless, and the weight of all those years was in the Prince's voice. Fingers very like the fingers of the sleeper twined Kit's own, and Murchaud drew Kit's hand out to brush Arthur's warm and pliant cheek.

“I always rather liked the tale,” Kit said, just to break the hush, “that he had become a raven. And that is why ravens are sacrosanct, and why should they all ever leave the Tower, it is assured that England will fall. Pity it isn't true.”

Murchaud smiled. “But it is true. As true as the story that he sleeps here in Faerie—”

“How can that be?” Kit, softly, wondering.

“All tales are true,” Murchaud answered, squeezing Kit's hand before he let it fall. “Some are simply more true than others. Look here, unto thy lover, Sir Poet: here stands a man born nigh unto Roman times, son of a story not invented until seven hundred years later—”

Kit couldn't bear to break the silence. He stepped away from the bier, his eyes stinging, and turned away for a moment to watch the sunlight move through the branches of the thorn trees.
A thousand years.
When he re-collected himself, he asked, “What do all these factions want of me, Highness?”

Silk rustled; Kit thought Murchaud shrugged. “What do you suppose they wanted of
him?
”

“Conquest,” Kit said promptly, and then a moment after—“Salvation.”

“Love?”

“Do you suppose?”

“My father loved him,” Murchaud said softly, and Kit turned to him in surprise. The Elf-knight hadn't moved: he stood, still, with bowed head over Arthur's bier.

“Your father betrayed him.”

“Aye,” Murchaud answered, glancing up with shining eyes. “That's what makes it a tragedy, my dear.”

Act III, scene vii